Albanian Accent Voice Over Recordings

Working with translation and production companies

Adding audio visual services to your mix will create many new sales opportunities for your team. We can add translation, voiceover and subtitling to your company’s offering, which will appear seamless to your clients and yet mesh easily with the processes in your own departments.

Matinée has over 40 years of experience working alongside translation and production companies. So you can be sure our project managers are fully at home with the technical process of supervising and delivering localised material, in a professional and timely manner.

If you are a translation company, we will send you some helpful guidelines for providing us with copy or scripts, as they will need to be formatted correctly for voicing or for subtitling. If you are a production company, we can organise trnaslations and create the subtitles in your preferred format. Voiceover recordings can be supplied as edited files, or we can remix with the original music and effects and layback to complete the new video soundtrack, ready to go.

Working seamlessly with your team, we can take on all or part of the process, according to your needs, and help widen your service offering.

Origins of the Albanian language and accent

Albania was under Roman rule until the 7th century and then in the 9th century it was ruled by Bulgaria. As a consequence of its Latin influence, there are many loan words from Latin in the Albanian language.

Albanian is said to be a natural language, with no descendants from other languages and it also has a distinct vocabulary. It does however share two features with the Balto-Slavic languages. These are the lengthening of the consonants and the endings of long syllables. Some linguists believe that the Albanian language is linked with Greek and Armenian.

The Albanian language is thought to have come from people who lived in the mountains, rather than on the coast. This is because the words in Albanian for plants and animals are original, whilst the words for agricultural and coastal activities are not.

Albanians were said to have settled originally around the area of the Mat river in northern Albania and then they gradually moved south to the Sckumbar river. This is where today’s Albanian dialect is divided. The two main dialects are Tosk which is spoken south of the river Shkumbar and Gheg, which is spoken north of the river Shkumbar. Tosk and Gheg can be mutually understood, but there are differences in the pronunciation and spelling. For instance, Tosk doesn’t use long, nasal vowels that are present in Gheg. Standard Albanian is based on the Tosk dialect and this is what is used for official purposes. It is the official language of Albania, Kosovo and parts of Montenegro.

Many people who hear the Albanian accent think it sounds like Turkish or Romanian. It doesn’t have the hard sounds that many Slavic languages have, in fact it is a softly spoken language. Its vocabulary has loan words from several different languages including Greek, Turkish, South Slavic, Italian and English. The language itself also has features from other Balkan countries including Bulgarian, Romanian, Macedonian. If you want to hear English spoken with an Albanian accent, check out singer, Bleona on this You Tube Video. You can hear her Albanian accent whilst she is talking to the American interviewers.